Connections
by motorcyclesfly
Summary: Even after everything, she is not as alone as she thinks. Alex/Richard friendship, based on a missing scene from S3.


(based on a missing scene, available at : h t t p : / / m o t o r c y c l e s f l y . l i v e j o u r n a l . c o m / 2 0 1 4 0 . h t m l # c u t i d 1)

They had dragged Alex to the Hydra kicking and screaming, literally. Richard, who had paused in his work outside the station to commune with the nature that sustained and refreshed him, felt his pulse quicken at her first shriek. When he had glanced up and noticed the malicious pleasure Danny took in her discomfort, his heart had begun to hammer.

"What do you do think you're doing?"

Pickett's glare was blunt, mean, the expression of a man savoring his brief affair with power. As though to prove a point, he twisted Alex's arm further behind her back, bending the wrist so that she yelped in pain. "Ben wants to talk with her," he said, kicking the toes of his boots at Alex's heels to get her to move again. She did so, awkwardly, her gaze black with hatred, piercing with emotion. Richard could see the tear tracks that ran down her face, washing away the dirt of her two days as a runaway. "She's been breaking down the security cameras again, and she stole a gun. I don't know what for. She didn't have the guts to use it when we found her. When I find out who it belonged to," he continued, relishing the control. "Somebody is going to have some explaining to do."

Richard's face remained unreadable as he studied the girl before him. Her dark hair was windblown, her face pale, and there were bluish shadows beneath her eyes from worry and lack of sleep. A button was missing from her shirt, probably torn away by the force of her struggles. Chapped, pink lips curled into a sneer as she caught him looking her way, and then she turned her head, stomping on Danny's foot as she did so.

"God damn it! Move it, kid," Danny said, shoving Alex forward so roughly that she nearly lost her balance. He grabbed her arm, wrenching it, and pulled her to her feet. "You got it, Alex? I said march!"

"Let go of me!" Alex screamed in return, furious. Her eyes flashed and she flailed, pulling loose for a moment, before Aldo grabbed her hair, pinning her in place until Danny could renew his grip. "Get off of me!"

Gritting his teeth, Richard turned to Danny. "Why don't you let me take her the rest of the way."

In response, the other man glared, indignant. He shook Alex, forcing her forward again, beckoning for Aldo to hold her other arm. "We can manage." He continued moving, lording over his prize. The gleam in his eye was malicious, his expression stony, and he jerked his head at Isabel, who was guarding the door, stalking forward rapidly once she opened it. He had no respect for Richard, despite the other man's position as Ben's closest -- often only -- advisor. Danny looked at Richard, and many other men, as competition, as opponents to be crushed into submission.

Richard got in the way, blocking their path. "She is Ben's daughter, Danny. Be careful with her." Alex, for whom he had just come to the rescue, deigned to stare at him for a moment, perplexed. Then, deciding he only cared what Ben thought, not about her, she turned away. "It's not necessary to be that rough."

"Ben's daughter? You think I don't know that?" Danny made a face, shaking Alex harder. She winced as he strained her shoulder. "This kid broke two radios. She tried to use that damn slingshot of hers to take out Mikhail, and she succeeded in stealing one of his horses. We haven't found it yet. Do you have any idea how hard it is to bring them here? She stole a gun too, and threatened to shoot three of us. Not to mention those cameras she wrecked, and the fire she set." He sneered. "If she was anybody but Ben's daughter, we would have taken care of her long ago now. She wouldn't be allowed to roam free, let me tell you what. He'd have anyone else in the cages by now."

"Pickett -"

"You got a problem with it, Alpert? Take it up with Ben. He's the one who told me to bring her in, and damn it, I'm going to."

With that, Pickett pressed Alex forward, leaving Richard frozen in place, staring after him in disgust and cool fury. Alex screamed, trying to shrug the two men off and to run free, but then, after cursing them, she fell silent, twisting around to look at Richard over her shoulder. Their eyes met for a crackling instant, the gazes suffused with questions and feelings. Curling his hand into a fist, Richard looked to Isabel, who shook her head slowly, warning him to wait. Ben had plans for Pickett; he was not dispensable, yet. Unusually frustrated, Richard followed Alex and her captors, fully intending to take Danny's advice and speak with Ben.

Alex was already inside when he reached the office. Richard looked though the marbled glass, but all he could see were blurry shadows. Ignoring Danny, who bumped into him intentionally as he passed by, Richard leaned beside the door. It was thin enough to hear the dialog within, as long as he held his breath.

"Karl's not dead --"

Richard straightened up, surprised. He knew full well Karl was alive and reasonably well -- healthy, at any rate -- back in the cages outside, but he was surprised to learn Ben had left Alex with the impression that Karl, her sole peer and love interest, was gone. To not have made that immediately clear, to allow Alex to suffer agonizing days of mourning believing he had been murdered, struck Richard as exceedingly cruel. He was familiar with Ben's methodology. Under normal circumstances, Ben saw little obstacle to putting people through pain, but this was Alex. Usually, Ben tried to cushion every blow, to protect her in any way.

Richard found he could still remember Alex as a child. It had been his plan to capture her, though originally, upon learning the woman Rousseau was a well-educated scientist, Richard had hoped to recruit her. Negotiations, he recalled with chagrin, had gone badly. Two had been killed in Danielle's traps, a third by the gun she fired randomly into the brush, too caught up in panic to think logically.

The infant had been barely a week old when Richard had sent his people to Danielle's camp to take the baby, drugging Rousseau with a blown dart full of poison before entering the area she had claimed as her own. Richard had scarcely laid eyes on Alex as a very young child, however. There was work to be done, both in the field where babies could not go, and off the island, where he was unwilling to take her. Ben, who had lost the woman he loved and his own daughter, had shown remarkable and not entirely expected skills for coping with the needs of a bright, curious child, and Richard had been only too happy to let Ben raise her as his own. Richard had seen Alex sometimes, though. Whenever he returned from a long absence, he brought her a present, and showed an interesting knack for selecting exactly what she most wanted. Where Ben was practical and prone to showering Alex with attention, Richard saw her only rarely but brought her frivolous, delicate things that had no place in the wild. She treasured them all the more intensely for their rare, unnecessary fragility.

"I don't care what happens to you," Alex spoke from beyond the door, her voice tearstained, full of rightful, yet guilty, rage. In the next instant, she slammed the door, just seconds after Richard stepped aside. Richard had a bare second to see Ben through the open door. The other man's expression was stunned, hurt, his eyes wide and blue and sad. Then the door swung closed again, and Alex brushed past.

"Alex!"

"Richard?" Alex asked, a fair degree of sarcasm and impatience in her tone as she rounded on him. Readjusting her satchel, she stared him down, her jaw set and determined. "What?" she prompted at his silence.

"Where are you going?"

Evenly, she met his gaze. "To get my boat and go to the armory. Nobody's guarding it now, they're all over here. I guess now would be a good time to get my gun back." There was panic writ across her face, and steel beneath. "Go ahead and tell him," she added derisively, thumbing towards the closed office door where Ben sat, pretending to read reports as his stung heart bled. "I don't care what he says. I don't care what he does to me. I'm going to get Karl, and we're going to get away from him." With that, she was gone, darting beyond Richard's reach as though she expected him to grab her.

Richard rapped on the glass of the door with his knuckles, waiting a beat before opening it to let Ben compose himself. "Is everything all right?" he asked in as neutral a tone as he could muster.

Ben glanced up, his eyes slightly watery beneath the gold rimmed glasses. Idly, he moved papers around the desk to give the semblance of busyness and preoccupation. Richard, who knew him better than anyone, saw through the tactic in an instant. "Everything is fine," Ben spoke airily, though when he noticed Pickett and Aldo were gone, he sighed softly, shoulders slumping. "Did she leave?" he asked, his tone full of raw hope. When Richard nodded, Ben frowned sadly, rubbing his temples. "Tell Danny to put Karl in the main building will you? Room 23. Then he and Aldo can head back to the airstrip. I don't want him near the other cages at the moment. Or anywhere near Alex," he added, grimacing, remembering how forcefully Danny had slammed Alex into the chair.

"Of course." Pausing by the door, Richard offered a smile, slightly sympathetic. He could remember Ben as a child too, of course. He had been a pre-adolescent boy with a mind too keen for his peers to tolerate and headstrong determination rare for someone of his few years. The smile faded as Richard remembered the tears that had graced a younger Ben's cheeks during their first meeting in the jungle. It was startling to think that Ben had once been easily broken. "Ben? You want me to keep an eye on her?"

Ben snorted, mildly amused in spite of himself. "As though she would let you."

"I can try," Richard offered. "We used to get along well."

Sad-faced, Ben nodded slowly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, you did." Clear blue, his gaze settled sorrowfully on Richard. "I used to get along with her, too. But things change." He reached for a file, spread it open on the desk, wanting work to get lost in. "Thank you, Richard," he spoke, letting go.

Closing the door behind him, Richard walked out office, then left the station. It was still light out, though the sky was rapidly darkening, turning grey and threatening storms. He caught Isabel's eye, shared a smile with her and instructed her to keep Danny busy and away from the captive airplane crash survivors, then strolled down the grass path past the station, out into the jungle. The path faded, but Richard knew every inch of both islands perfectly, and spotted the crushed grass, the snapped twigs, the clawing branches that had snagged Alex's hair as she had run through them. He followed her easily, in the a method that could barely be called tracking, it was so simple. A smile graced his lips as he saw the patch of grass and weeds that covered her hideaway, the one none of the others, save perhaps Ben, knew about.

Five hundred feet beyond it, on the far sandy shore, was Alex, knelt over her boat. Tears dripped down her face as she threw her supplies and pack into it, but she wiped them away when she heard Richard step out from the underbrush. After a momentary flare of panic, she ignored him, trying to push the boat into the water. She looked up in surprise a moment later as Richard deftly guided the boat into the still, vibrant ocean.

"You looked like you could use some help," Richard spoke as she gaped at him, clearly mistrustful. He walked out to the boat, ignoring the water that lapped at his knees and dampened his trousers, then reached out his hand so she could take it. Helping her into the boat earned Richard a brief smile from Alex, which he returned.

"What are you doing?" she asked him, crossing her arms over her chest protectively. "If my father -- if _Ben_ -- finds out you helped me get away from here, he'll be angry."

"Maybe. Maybe not," Richard answered calmly. "You know, Alex, if you talked to him, he might understand."

She rolled her eyes. "I hate him! How is he supposed to understand that?"

"He might understand you better than you think." Richard settled into the boat beside Alex, taking her by surprise as he reached for one of the oars and dipped it into the water. "I thought you might want some company. Whatever you believe about us now, we are not your enemies, Alex. Your father cares about you very much. We all do."

She shook her head, gnawing on her bottom lip. Her eyes studied him, patently suspicious and troubled. "He put you up to this, didn't he? What, did he send you to follow me? Are you here to make sure I don't get into trouble?"

Amused, Richard offered a brief smile. "Are you planning to get into trouble?"

"No." Alex narrowed her eyes, watching him for a moment. Her hand hovered on her hip pocket, where she had stashed the slingshot she had managed to steal back from Danny when he and Richard had been talking. In her other pocket was the silver key to the ammunition cabinet inside the yellow house she sometimes lived in with Ben, which she had stolen out of the drawer while her father had been preoccupied in telling her of his cancer. A pang went through her, remembering how Ben had read to her, his voice rising and falling melodically, when she had been small, and how she had sought him out in the middle of the night after she'd had nightmares. She had just screamed at him, told him she hated him, that she wanted him dead, but that hurt too much to think about, so she met Richard's calm gaze. He smiled back at her, comfortingly, and she remembered _him_ too, taking her on long walks, striding confidently through the jungle like he owned the place, unafraid of the polar bears and plumes of smoke and whispers in the trees. He had listened to her once, she remembered. _Maybe, just maybe_, a voice spoke in the back of her head, _he will listen now_.

"Here," she offered, motioning for him to hand her the second oar. "We'll get there faster if we both row."


End file.
